NeoCon East: The Experience

Take in our whole NeoCon East experience by reading about our booth setup first.

Day One

Anticipation grew as 9:00 quickly approached. Because we completed our booth on Tuesday, the final touchups went smoothly giving us a good half hour to sit around and check out other booths before the show began. With everyone else putting the finishing touches on their booths, you could feel the ambiance begin to take shape and the vibes that were coming from the other exhibitors told you it was going to be a great show.

With only three members of StonePeak manning the booth, Joe McGovern from Best Tile drove down from Boston to help out. Itproved to be extremely beneficial as even though the show started slow, our location proved to be very popular as crowds of people came to check out the Architects Institution of America display, the National Council for Interior Design Qualifications setup, and of course to the convention’s theater, which were all located nearby.

The first Keynote speaker was Victor Olgyay, a member of the Architects Institution of America. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to listen to his presentation, as the combination of the crowd he drew and the attendees that were slowly making their way down to our end quickly turned the booth into an attraction itself. I was surprised at the amount of people who strictly came in because our booth stood out, which was instant gratification for all the hard work we put into not just designing the booth, but constructing it as well.

Day one began to wrap up as NeoCon opened their bar, which was at around 4:00. Being located about 50 feet from our booth; once again people from all industries were passing by and complementing our booth design. Today proved to be both exhausting and rewarding as we began packing up, wondering what tomorrow would have in store for us.

Day Two

Day two started slowly as well, however the marketing team from NeoCon East informed us that today’s Keynote Speaker, Jhane Barnes, had over 400 people registered to attend her speech! It appeared that being located next to the theater would once again bring in massive amounts of people.

This time I was able to sneak away from the booth for a bit to listen to Barnes speak, who had the audience thoroughly entertained with not just the stories about her career in design, but in the manner of which she told them. Successfully incorporating wit into her past experiences, Barnes held the interests of all who were at hand; including the many students who were in attendance for the NCIDQ event that would take place later that day.

The atmosphere of our booth dramatically changed towards the end of the day as the guests quickly changed from established architects and designers to students attending the NCIDQ event for networking and resume exchange. Being able to teach future members of the A&D community about the benefits of porcelain ceramics and green tile was extremely rewarding knowing that someday in the near future we might cross paths again. We wish you all the best of luck as you work hard in finishing up your degrees!

The convention started wrapping up around 3:00, with everyone out the door by 4:00. After two days of constructing our booth, and two more exhausting day of being diligent exhibitors, came everyone’s favorite part; dismantling and packing! (Insert sarcasm here).

All in all it was a great show. We have already signed up for NeoCon East 2012 (October 17-18) and are keeping the same location. Thank you to everyone that made this possible and we will see you again next year!

Were you there? Let us know what your favorite part of NeoCon East was?